Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

Fleeing to Stay Alive: Tales of Forced Displacement in Venezuela & Gaza - Bruce N. Fisk

Fleeing to Stay Alive:
Tales of Forced Displacement in Venezuela and Gaza
Bruce N. Fisk, NEME Senior Research Fellow

From Panamá’s shiny capital we drove our rental as far as we could toward the border of Colombia. My wife and I had flown from Peru to attend a fortunate cousin’s unforgettable wedding, but we were as eager to meet some of the forgettable unfortunates desperately squeezing through the “narrow waist” of the American hemisphere. After years roaming the Middle East, we counted a number of Palestinian refugees among our friends, but thus far these Latino refugiados en movimiento existed for us in only two dimensions, as fodder for news reports and topics of awkward conversation.

Five hours on the road brought us to an impassable tangle of jungle, mountains and rivers. The Darién Gap as it’s called is the only break in the Pan-American highway—the 30,000 mile thread that weaves through fourteen countries from Alaska to Argentina. In Spanish it’s el Tapón, The Plug. For migrants and asylum seekers it’s the largest obstacle on the path from South America to their land of hope, the U.S.A. 

More than half a million souls dared the 100-kilometer Gap last year (2023). That’s 1,400 per day. They travel solo, as couples, as single parents with children. They form small groups along the way, many retracing the path of relatives who have sent money, and Instagram photos that romanticize immigrant life in the U.S. They encounter thieves and coyotes (human smugglers). They face abuse and sexual violation. They fear snake bites and injury, wolf attacks and drowning. 

Our drive ended in the dusty shambles of Lajas Blancas, a reception hamlet where migrants, emerging from the jungle on foot or in dugout canoes, find a few services and handouts. UN and Red Cross vehicles came and went. Trekkers clutched brand new sweatshirts bestowed by some NGO, oddly out of place in the tropical heat. 

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Lament is Not Enough: Evangelicals offer “Thoughts and Prayers” for Gaza - Bruce Fisk

“I've seen the flame of hope among the hopeless
And that was truly the biggest heartbreak of all.”

Bruce Cockburn, Last Night of the World (1999)

Permission: Omar Esstar

October 7, 2023: a dark day that changed everything. Ever since, a nation of traumatized, enraged Israeli Jews have been grieving over loved ones slaughtered when Hamas militants entered Israel. The massacre of more than 1,100 in a single day conjured specters of the Holocaust, robbed Israelis of their secure refuge, and fomented resentment of their government’s complacency and incompetence.

Overnight, a politically fractured nation was united in what they felt was a battle for survival. Voices calling for negotiations or ceasefire were notably absent. Thousands of Israeli reservists found themselves preparing for urban warfare in the streets of Gaza.

Almost as traumatic in Israel was the number of hostages Hamas smuggled into Gaza—originally 240, including children, the elderly, and foreign workers, of which about 105 have been released. Hostage family members, camped out near Israel’s Defense Ministry, are demanding political engagement with Hamas instead of endless war.

Also, since October 7, millions of traumatized, desperate Gazans have lost homes, hospitals, schools, and families. Israel has intentionally deprived them of medical care, electricity, clean water, shelter, sanitation, and adequate food. Those not yet killed by bombs or bullets are now succumbing to disease, thirst, and starvation. As winter sets in, desperation deepens.

The toll of death and displacement in Gaza has surpassed what Palestinians suffered in 1948, during the saga they remember as The Catastrophe. Israeli forces have killed an average of 300 Gazans per week (not counting a week-long ceasefire). According to U.S. intelligence, Israel dropped more than 29,000 bombs on Gaza between the beginning of the assault and mid-December. More than twice as many Gazan civilians have been killed in three months than over the two years of Russian-Ukrainian warfare. These numbers, covering October 7 to January 24, need daily updating.

In Israel	Killed: about 1,139 (including 29 children) Injured: at least 8,730, along with destroyed homes and property
In the   West     Bank	Killed: at least 370 (including more than 99 children) Injured: more than 4,250
In Gaza	Killed: at least 25,700 (more than 10,000 children, 7,000 women, 94 journalists) Injured: more than 63,740 (at least 8,663 children and 6,327 women) Missing: more than 8,000  Destroyed or damaged: more than half of Gaza’s homes, plus schools, hospitals, ambulances, places of worship Displaced from their homes: 85% of Gazans

With the Gaza Strip increasingly unlivable, Israeli officials across the political spectrum are openly pushing to “voluntarily” resettle Gazans in countries like Egypt, Congo and Saudi Arabia. When we recall that Zionist forces expelled ¾ million Palestinians in 1948 (many of whom ended up in Gaza), and destroyed their homes to prevent mass return, we understand why Gazans are experiencing this nightmare as déjà vu.

Ever the Victim, Never the Aggressor: A Response to the “Evangelical Statement in Support of Israel” - Bruce Fisk

Ever the Victim, Never the Aggressor: A Response to the “Evangelical Statement in Support of Israel” (10-17-23)

by Bruce N. Fisk - November 29, 2023

With the “Evangelical Statement in Support of Israel” (ESSI), we condemn the October 7 attacks of Hamas that killed and captured innocent Israelis and internationals. We call on Hamas to release captives immediately and cease targeting civilian populations.

We also agree with ESSI that these events have a context—historical, ideological, theological, and geopolitical. Astonishingly, however, every element of context that ESSI highlights depicts Israel as victim and target, never as aggressor and occupier, much less as international humanitarian law-breaker.

By implying that the hostilities of October 7 extend back to the time of Abraham, ESSI embraces the myth that today’s conflict is ancient and religious rather than modern and political, a conflict principally about European Jews fleeing persecution and establishing a national homeland in Arab-majority territory.

During the war of 1948, Zionist forces expelled Palestinians from home and land. The new state of Israel prevented the return of 750,000 war-time refugees, 200,000 of whom became stranded in Gaza. Israel has subjected the West Bank and Gaza to military control since 1967. Israel’s disengagement from Gaza in 2005 changed only the means, not the fact, of control over a Palestinian population that now numbers well over 2 million. We do not reduce Hamas’ culpability when we recognize and lament decades of Palestinian suffering.

ESSI unhelpfully implies that Palestinian resistance to subjugation amounts to antisemitism. It is not antisemitic for Palestinians to pursue self-determination. Indeed, a people’s struggle “for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation” was affirmed in 1982 by the United Nations.

ESSI points to Israel as a rare example of “democracy” in the region. The state of Israel, however, sees itself as “the nation-state of the Jewish people.” The national movement called Zionism, as defined by Israel, aims for the sovereignty of Jews in the Land. The right of national self-determination in Israel belongs only to Jews. Meanwhile, in the months prior to October 7, hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jews had been demonstrating against judicial reforms they deemed to be fundamentally anti-democratic. Nor should we forget that 50% of those under Israeli control are not Jewish. Sadly, the status quo today is “one unequal state in which millions of Palestinians lack basic rights.” Israel is a flawed democracy. But democracy for whom?

ESSI rightly condemns “violence against the vulnerable.” But the only vulnerable ones who seem to merit ESSI’s moral consideration are Jews, whether killed (1,200 Jews and other foreigners) or taken captive by Hamas. But since October 7, Israel has killed close to 15,000 Palestinians, almost half of them children. Many thousands more have been injured or lie buried under rubble. Israel’s attacks have displaced hundreds of thousands and deprived millions of life’s necessities. ESSI includes no call to protect vulnerable Gazans, referring only obliquely to “the dignity and personhood of all persons living in the Middle East.”

We do not call Evangelicals to sever friendship with Jews, but we must stand with peoples, not states. As Gaza’s human catastrophe worsens; as Israel’s actions in Gaza promise to out-crazy Hamas (as Thomas Friedman recently put it); as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stands to gain, politically and personally, from perpetuating the war, we should be demanding protection for Gaza’s masses as well as release of Hamas’ hostages, and calling our leaders to pursue solutions diplomatic, not genocidal.

Jesus calls his followers to be peacemakers. May God bring peace to Gaza, to Israel, and to all peoples of the Middle East.

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Bruce N. Fisk, Ph.D., is Senior Research Fellow with the Network of Evangelicals for the Middle East, and co-founder of Curiously Global.

The Allure of Moral Clarity in a Time of War: A Response to Russell Moore - by Bruce Fisk

The Allure of Moral Clarity in a Time of War: A Response to Russell Moore’s “American Christians Should Stand with Israel under Attack” (Christianity Today, October 7, 2023)

Bruce N. Fisk, October 12, 2023

Between the headline and the byline of Russell Moore’s recent piece in Christianity Today we read:

“While we pray for peace, we need moral clarity about this war.”

It was this call for “moral clarity”—in a time of horror, rage, and confusion—that caught my attention. It reminded me of William Bennett’s 2002 hymn to patriotism, Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism.

In the wake of 9/11, Bennett reminisced about how “the doubts and questions . . . seemed to fade into insignificance. Good was distinguished from evil, truth from falsehood. We were firm, dedicated, unified. It was, in short, a moment of moral clarity.”

It was this moral clarity about America’s righteousness that accompanied US troops into Iraq on a misguided quest for regime change. Cheered on by with-us-or-with-the-enemy rhetoric, our war on terror left many thousands dead, wounded, and displaced, and sowed seeds of resentment and despotism across the region.

Many are calling Hamas’ October attack Israel’s 9/11. Indeed, per capita, the number of slain Israelis is already more than ten times the number of Americans killed on that dark day in September 2001. Hamas has perpetrated unspeakable evil and horrific war crimes.

So, we’re told, one side is clearly right. The other is utterly wrong. This is not the time for moral confusion. We must stand with Israel. Full stop.

To claim moral clarity in such a moment, however, is far from helpful.

It means we take refuge in binary thinking, silence contrary voices, and erase the complexities—legal, historical, political, theological—that have beset the land and demographic wars in Israel/Palestine for over a century.

My first visits to the Holy Land, two decades ago, were marked by moral clarity. Today, I know too much. I’ve seen too much. Hamas is committing war crimes, without question. But they are not committing them in a vacuum.

Uncritical pro-Israel clarity over recent decades has provided international cover, financial backing, and biblical justification for legalized discrimination, settlement expansion, extra-judicial killings, and systematic Palestinian subjugation. Christian Zionists’ unflinching opposition to partitioning the Promised Land has excused land expropriation, demolitions of homes and schools, and other forms of legal discrimination. This kind of clarity we do not need.

In the weeks ahead, history will repeat itself. Thousands of innocents have already become homeless. Palestinian families, trapped between Hamas butchery and Israeli bombs, will suffer and die. What we need to hear at such times are calls for indiscriminate compassion, challenges to work for justice, and invitations to humbly acknowledge our complicity. What we don’t need to hear are tales of light and darkness.

Allow me to contend for messy perplexity rather than binary certitude, by challenging seven assertions embedded in Moore’s piece.